Why I created the world’s most hated font: Comic Sans creator speaks

Few fonts have divided opinion quite like Comic Sans – a fact of which creator Vincent Connare is well aware.

Speaking at the aptly named fourth annual Boring Conference, Mr Connare, from Boston, Massachusetts, discussed the continuing use of his font in bizarre places, from tombstone to invoices, and explained why he designed it.

‘A typeface is an answer to a question,’ Mr Connare, 54, told the Guardian.

‘Everything I’ve ever done is a solution to somebody’s problem.’

Mr Connare was referring to Windows Bob, a short-lived Windows interface that featured a cartoon dog who spoke only through speech bubbles.

Times New Roman, he explained, didn’t look right – so he got to work.

Comic Sans has far out-lived Windows Bob (Picture: ROFLThing NYC)

He drew the original characters with a mouse to get the ‘wonky’ comic book feel.

‘It only took about three days to get the basic font down,’ he said.

But while Microsoft Bob came and went, Comic Sans endured, something Mr Connare credits to its in-your-face-obvious quality.

‘It sticks out,’ he said.

‘Everything else looks like something traditional you see in books.’

James Ward, who organised the first Boring Conference in 2010 after he heard the Interesting Conference was cancelled, admits it can be both a delicate and confusing matter when booking speakers, insisting to them that while the topics of the Boring Conference are, well, boring, the content isn’t.

‘If anything goes wrong I can kind of go: ‘Well, it did say on the ticket’,’ he said mischievously.

Other speakers at the conference included calendar-loving dentist Tony Dignam, who explained all Walkers crisps go past their best before date on a Saturday, ice cream woman Ali Coote, who gave inside information on the ice cream business, and journalist Rhodri Marsden, who played the endings of 25 different national anthems – all exactly the same.